The cream of the videogame crop has been hand-picked to battle for your entertainment in our all-out, no holds barred, slug-fest of the best trailers and videos from this year's E3! 32 characters from the hottest, freshest franchises will be judged by you, the fans, and there can only be one winner. Who gets an extra life and who gets unplugged is up to you!

It went down how it was gonna go down is how I see it: which is to say based on the consistent, overwhelming victories throughout this contest, it was pretty clear early on that Grimlock, one of the breakout characters from Transformers: Fall of Cybertron would be in the final round. In his last round against Skyrim's Dovahkiin, the dinosaur that's also an alien robot commanded a huge lead, taking a bite out of 75% of the vote.

But who was he going to face? Assassin's Creed III hero Connor? Maybe a rebooted Lara Croft? What about zombie fighter Chris Redfield?

In the end, it came down to one barcode tattooed assassin, Hitman: Absolution's Agent 47, facing down Grimlock in the final round. Agent 47 was no slouch when it came to trouncing his own opponent, the still unnamed bounty hunter from Star Wars 1313. Apparently the Force wasn't strong enough with the merc, because Agent 47 was able to win with a 60/40 split.

Now it's down to your final choice between these two deadly characters in our post-E3 Throwdown.

Follow @MTVMultiplayer on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And don’t forget to follow our video gaming and TV writer @TheCharlesWebb.

Criterion's Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit was a success, not simply because it was a good racing game, but because with one game, the developer behind the Burnout series redeemed what had become kind of lackluster in Need For Speed.

EA seemed to think so too, particularly in light of the vast gulf in quality (and commercial response) to Hot Pursuit and last year's not-so-great The Run (developed by EA's Black Box studio). Instead of their previous practice of alternating development chores between studios, EA has placed the franchise solely in Criterion's very capable hands.Read More...

While this week only has a couple of really big releases with 2K Games' shooter, Spec Ops: The Line along with the multiplatform release of The Amazing Spider-Man, for some gamers, this might be overshadowed by today's Dawnguard expansion for Skyrim as well as the "Extended Cut" for the Mass Effect 3 ending. How many of you will be revisiting these games that have a couple of months on them at this point?

Personally, I'm happy to have an excuse to mess around in Skyrim for another few compulsive hours of questing, murdering, and looting. As for Mass Effect 3: I played the game and I got an ending. I may not have been overwhelmed with it, but in as much as I had "big questions" about the series, BioWare provided answers. Did they reflect all of my choices in the game in a 1:1 manner? No, but when do these things ever? Nonetheless, I will do my due diligence and check it out.

Hit the jump for a couple of this week's other notable releases.Read More...

The cream of the videogame crop has been hand-picked to battle for your entertainment in our all-out, no holds barred, slug-fest of the best trailers and videos from this year's E3! 32 characters from the hottest, freshest franchises will be judged by you, the fans, and there can only be one winner. Who gets an extra life and who gets unplugged is up to you!

Throughout this tournament, we've been following two unlikely characters with interest as they effectively kicked all of their competitors to the curb. Eric Cartman, returning to games in the sweet-looking South Park: The Stick of Truth RPG from Obsidian, and Grimlock from High Moon Studios' Transformers: The Fall of Cybertron.

Like unstoppable, big-boned, toothy juggernauts (those descriptors may not apply equally, mind you), these two have taken out Mario, Dante, the Pikmin, and even Raiden. Well, Grimlock can add one more notch to his belt (robot dinosaurs wear belts, right?) after ousting Dead Space's tortured hero, space engineer Isaac Clark. And Cartman defeated his opponent...

...oh no. Cartman's out. In one of the most unexpected surprise wins of the contest, Eric Cartman's "authoratah" was not recognized by Skyrim's Dovahkiin who took home a whopping 70% of the vote. The last round was also the end of the road for Chris Redfield, who was bounced 52% to 48% vote against Star Wars 1313's unnamed bounty hunter in another close competition.

But the one we just had to watch this weekend was Agent 47 vs. Connor, which was characterized by razor-thin margins with Connor taking the lead on Friday before somehow losing his lead, ultimately succumbing to Agent 47. The battle of the assassins ended up being decided by a 55.75% to 44.25% margin.

Follow @MTVMultiplayer on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And don’t forget to follow our video gaming and TV writer @TheCharlesWebb.

The cream of the videogame crop has been hand-picked to battle for your entertainment in our all-out, no holds barred, slug-fest of the best trailers and videos from this year's E3! 32 characters from the hottest, freshest franchises will be judged by you, the fans, and there can only be one winner. Who gets an extra life and who gets unplugged is up to you!

We haven't done any mid-round updates like this up, but it's just gotten real over the last 24 hours during our post-E3 throwdown. First up, a LOT more of you are voting, and that's great, but that also means that the contests are getting more heated as the final eight contestants duke it out.

The big story, though is Assassins Creed III lead Connor going toe-to-toe with Hitman's Agent 47, and this is a close one as we head into the weekend: Connor's squeaking by with just a 1.76% lead as of this writing. In any event, you guys must really love assassins one way or the other (with a slight preference for the not-bald guy, much to my disappointment). Connor's the new guy on the block (relatively speaking, although the AC franchise has a couple of years under its belt now), while Agent 47 has been doing dirt since the PS2 era.

Which one will be the winner when the current round wraps up next Wednesday?

You know a game company is coming out swinging when they hold a 22 minute long product showcase less than three weeks after E3, but that's exactly what Nintendo did last night. Courtesy of another Nintendo Direct internet broadcast, Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Amie, was accompanied by members of the Tree House and Nintendo staff to show off new hardware and software for the 3DS as well as updates about games for the Wii and Wii U. Basically, if you thought something was missing from Nintendo at E3, they covered it last night.Read More...

The cream of the videogame crop has been hand-picked to battle for your entertainment in our all-out, no holds barred, slug-fest of the best trailers and videos from this year's E3! 32 characters from the hottest, freshest franchises will be judged by you, the fans, and there can only be one winner. Who gets an extra life and who gets unplugged is up to you!

You know, we really thought Luffy was going to take it all the way to the final round again. Unfortunately, the One Piece pirate was defeated by a last-minute rally by Agent 47. We're just going to assume that means you like your heroes bald, not bendy.

Also out: Pikmin, handily defeated by Transformers' Grimlock, who's now two for two in matchups against Nintendo characters. You come at the robot T-rex, you get the teeth. Another animation-to-game character with a big win: Eric Cartman took out Metal Gear Rising's Raiden.

The shape of this competition is starting to look weird, with unexpectedly close matchups (Dead Space hero Isaac Clark eking out a 0.4% win against Spider-Man) or crazy lopsided (the Skyrinm's Dovahkiin wiped Sam Fisher out with a 4-to-1 lead, while Connor toppled the Master Chief by a 2-to-1 margin). Oh, and Lara Croft's not having a better time of it this week, getting bounced by Star Wars 1313's unnamed bounty hunter.

Follow @MTVMultiplayer on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And don’t forget to follow our video gaming and TV writer @TheCharlesWebb.

The cream of the videogame crop has been hand-picked to battle for your entertainment in our all-out, no holds barred, slug-fest of the best trailers and videos from this year's E3! 32 characters from the hottest, freshest franchises will be judged by you, the fans, and there can only be one winner. Who gets an extra life and who gets unplugged is up to you!

In a fight between a transforming robot T-rex and an Italian plumber, who would win? If you put your money on the beloved Nintendo mascot, then you'd be pretty much wrong. The Grimlock vs. Mario contest was one of several surprises from the first round of Battle Arena E3 Throwdown voting.

Mascots had a rough time including the overnight ousting of Kratos by Skyrim's Dovahkiin by an approximately 70/30 split. Disney characters got the boot entirely, and Devil May Cry's Dante simply could not defeat Eric Cartman. Meanwhile, one of our producers here at MTV central is weeping bitter tears as his beloved CL4P-TP from Borderlands was taken down by Agent 47 in one of the first round's closest contests. Finally, Sonic was defeated by Monkey D. Luffy (seriously, a bad time to be a mascot) as we could be facing another bracket tournament where the bendy One Piece pirate could take the whole thing home again.

Follow @MTVMultiplayer on Twitter and be sure to "like" us on Facebook for the best geek news about comics, toys, gaming and more! And don’t forget to follow our video gaming and TV writer @TheCharlesWebb.

Looking back at the list of titles that graced 8-bit consoles (and PCs) in 1987, you find that's it's a veritable parade of first entries in what would in time go on to either greatly influence gaming or spawn literally dozens of sequels between them. This is the year that modern video gaming was born, as simple left-to-right platforming was starting to experience previously unseen variations and mutations, while the standard bearers of fighting games and RPGs experienced their genesis. Take a look back at some of these classic titles celebrating their 25th anniversary as part of the 1987 Silver series on MTV Multiplayer.

Shigeru Miyamoto didn't think the original The Legend of Zelda for the Famicom was going to be much of a success. Miyamoto, who was director and producer on the first game worried that it was both "very plain" and not mainstream enough for Japanese audiences when it was released in '86. In the West, we were already kind of past our fascination with sword and sorcery, Legend having completely died at the box office in '86.

But what changed things up in Japan in 1986 and a year later in the U.S.? In fact, how was a series with only tenuous ties between entries*, wildly varying art styles between games, and a mostly wordless protagonist able to ultimately sell over 67 million copies across the life of the franchise?